


i don't love you (like i did yesterday)

by a_stra



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Basically when you're a video game character and your stats reset, Family Fluff, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, I WILL get Five Mr. Pennycrumb, Number Five | The Boy Needs A Hug, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Sort of? More or less, Young Number Five | The Boy, no beta we die like ben
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-09
Updated: 2020-11-20
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:15:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27465538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_stra/pseuds/a_stra
Summary: Forty-five years seem a lot shorter when your memories are like a puzzle whose pieces goes missing every time you die.Or conditional immortality isn't fun and bodies aren't meant to be rewound through time over and over again.Or Five is thirteen again but also fifty-eight and wants to save his siblings, their names a mantra throughout the years, he'll remember them even if he forgets everything else.
Relationships: Number Five | The Boy & The Hargreeves (Umbrella Academy)
Comments: 24
Kudos: 145





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I haven’t written an actual fic since 2012, I always have ideas but always find it difficult putting it into words. I’m sorry to anyone who reads this while I’m trying to remember how this works – it’s like remembering how to ride a bike right?
> 
> But I got this idea and then wrote it in basically an hour or two. I don't have a Beta, but hopefully I caught any weird typos / grammar errors?
> 
> The inspiration for this comes from the writing prompt here: [link](https://writing-prompt-s.tumblr.com/post/634246833373364224/your-secret-power-is-save-point-which-is), except I misread it so badly that it no longer actually fits the writing prompt (the original idea would have been fun rip my reading comp). Reverse save file I guess? Human save file? And also one of the au’s by the amazing Soulykins, specifically their [immortal au](https://in-tua-deep.tumblr.com/tagged/immortal-au)!
> 
> Title comes from MCR, b/c TUA honestly got me back into them and also b/c this was drafted as "Save File Corrupted: Please Eject and Frantically Blow in Cartridge to Try Again" which was terrible.
> 
> General content warning for death, especially of children. Nothing descriptive but the first chapter is heavily focused on what Five experienced during his time post-apoc!

The first time Five dies, it feels like waking up after passing out – dehydration after moving stone and rubble to make rudimentary graves for his siblings.

Luther. Diego. Allison. Klaus. 

There’s two missing and he holds on to the tentative hope that it could just be their town that was reduced to ash and dust. His grief weighs heavy in his heart, some heavy thing that has him stumbling with every step, but he moves forward with the idea of _FiveSixSeven_. 

(They were always the ones who found solace in each other, Five and Ben sitting on Vanya’s bed side-by-side, both of their heads in their books as Vanya practiced. 

Her music was a soundtrack for more nostalgic memories, of the two of them, listening to his ideas and new discoveries or Ben’s careful hopes of growing up to become something else – not a child stuck behind a mask, a reluctant hero, he’s sure he can help without using his powers.)

He finds the book a week later, sees the face of an older Vanya on the cover and learns that he’ll never know the twenty-nine-year-old Ben because he died at the age of sixteen. It takes days to trek back to the mound of stones but he needs to create two more markers; has to mourn for two more ghosts that he’ll never be able to see. 

The first mark in Vanya’s book is the date: _April 1st, 2019_ and Five promises he’ll come back, not to this newly created cemetery of siblings, but _back_ , he’ll go back to when he ran off and stop it all. 

Here’s the thing:

No matter how much their father had tried to instill survival skills into them, there is a difference in surviving in the forests with only each other and trying to survive a post-apocalypse landscape. Five’s memorized lists of edible plants don’t help when he has to crawl into collapsing buildings to get water and food. It doesn’t prepare him for buildings filled with kids, tiny bodies hunched over tiny desks. 

Desperation means eating questionable foods. 

Stores collapse while he’s still inside of them. 

Sometimes he can’t help but cry even when he’s resorted to refilling his bottles from stagnant puddles. 

And maybe Five is more equipped than the average thirteen-year-old to survive a post-apocalyptic landscape, but he’s still a _child_. 

He doesn’t realize something is wrong until around the fifth time. It’s easy to think he’s just waking up from fainting, it happens enough that he’s almost unconcern when he wakes up to the sun in his eyes and the taste of ash coating his mouth. 

Except his memories don’t match what’s been scrawled into the margins of Vanya’s book and he has rows of equations that he never remembers writing. 

Thirteen-year-olds are not meant to survive an apocalypse after all, yet, here he was still living and breathing. 

And he puts it all together, Five has always been the brilliant one in their family, mind running a mile a minute, always waiting for everyone to catch up to him, can see a clear hypothesis forming – if I die, I reset and I’ll forget something – and it’s easy to prove with meticulous journaling.

Moments of the apocalypse go first. Days of the week that are suddenly gone when he blinks awake – one day Five wakes up and forgets that he buried his siblings, only reminded by the map with the marked cross that they’re in the ruins of the place he once called home. 

He convinces himself it’s a mercy to not be haunted by nightmares of their ghosts and their blame. 

It works until his mind conjures its own images instead for him to greet every night. 

Eventually, he forgets Dolores and flips through his book in a panic trying to remember because his heart beats frantically in the reminder that she’s important – _how dare you forget_?

He spends the rest of the day wrapped around her, whispering apologies into her shoulder as he tucks up close to her. 

Sometimes Five is better at living, he can get into his twenties without his incidents. Other times he wakes up thirteen again unsure if he fell asleep still breathing and cycles through his memories and thoughts, trying to discern if they’re missing due to the passage of time or death. 

The memory loss is inconsistent, sometimes it's inconsequential things like if he and Dolores read this book already ( _I’m always willing to hear it again, darling_ ), but other times its parts of the equations and he’s going back days of work to make sure past him did actually carry this decimal or used this formula. 

He needs to go home. He needs to save them.   
  


Half a century is a long time and there’s only so much to forget when his days are the same. 

Five almost thinks it’s old age, even if he only feels sixteen right now because his childhood bedroom or which one of them were scared of the dark seems unimportant in the grander scheme of things

But then he begins to forget –

The time when Five jumped into Ben’s room with Vanya, both of them climbing into his bed. Ben’s silent but they both know he’s still awake, he always is after his training, and they both quietly wait, knees and elbows pressing against each other, reassuring him they were there. 

When Allison and Klaus learned about sleepovers and they all secretly gathered to have the two of them paint their nails as they danced to Luther’s records and eat junk food Five stole from the convenience store. The seven of them were all together, giggling softly with their fingers sticky from frosting and sugar. Klaus laughs so hard that he spits crumbs onto Diego who shoves him back in retaliation with a sharp ‘ _Gross!_ ’

Mom’s pancakes. Diego’s laugh. Vanya’s smile.

Remember. Remember. _Remember_. 

Luther. Diego. Allison. Klaus. Ben. Vanya.

He is the fifth out of seven children and he repeats his name to himself, says it aloud after weeks of silence to hear it spoken. 

Five because there are seven of them. 

Five because there are six of them waiting for him. 

He needs to go home to save them all. 

And he does because food is a secondary concern when it looks like he’s conditionally immortal, he’ll come back with a few pieces missing but he has a system that he’s developed a system that he’ll understand no matter how much goes missing. The equations come faster and one day he’s standing in the rubble of the library, roughly twenty-three years old and ready to go home.

Going back in time feels like swimming against a current and he's blinking awake, stumbling upright to the sight of his siblings in front of him. 

"Does anyone else see little Number Five, or is that just me?"

  
  



	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Maybe he’s simply cursed to mourn his siblings again and again._
> 
> Reunions are had and sandwiches are eaten. 
> 
> Can you miss people who are right in front of you?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello!! First off, thank you to everyone who’s read, kudos, commented, etc! 
> 
> I started to write this for me because work and life is stressful and I've always loved writing as a hobby – sharing it only came out of some late-night courage and my friend's encouragement. So it's really just been lovely seeing people enjoy something I've made!
> 
> After writing some parts that show up later, I figured out it's going to sibling bonding/fluff with plot on the side. So the fic is probably more like a bunch of short arcs / one-shots in one place since I won't be writing an entire canon divergence of the show because I really don't want to rehash out every single bit of the plot again. Nevertheless, I do hope you enjoy!

Sometimes, when he had too much to drink and his heart too heavy with hope, Five imagined himself at home, slotting back neatly between Klaus and Ben as if he never left. Dolores listens as he practices conversations, running situations where he lets the apocalypse fade away like a half-remembered dream.

_“It’ll be like I never left, well, I can’t calculate for the inevitably of free will, so maybe give or take a few months, but I’ll be home.”_

Ben will survive, Vanya will never have to grow up so lonely, and the world will never be reduced to rubble, dust, and a lonely child.

Without even realizing, he finds himself shuffled into the kitchen. One moment he was outside in the courtyard and the next there’s a sandwich in front of him and his siblings gathered around the table. 

Relief and grief wash over him in equal parts because his family alive and breathing, unfamiliar adults who are achingly familiar – Five had lived years, _decades_ , without them, but they grew up without him. 

“It’s been sixteen years, where the hell were you?” Diego asks, looking at Five like at any moment he’ll change or disappear like this was a decade's long prank finally over. 

“The future.” 

He can’t quite remember who he was at thirteen the first time around, but Five can shape himself into a facsimile of it. Let arrogance be a comfort because the words that he wants to say ( _I missed you all. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry but I’m home. I’m home. I’m finally home._ ) stick in his throat like and he swallows them down like glass because he’s already an open wound with too much grief. 

Maybe he’s simply cursed to mourn his siblings again and again.

“It’s shit if you’re wondering,” Five adds, fingers tightening and unwinding, wanting to reach out to any of them to reassure himself that they’re real. 

Father didn’t allow softness, found it synonymous with weakness, of tamed predators rolling onto their backs to show their bellies. _It’ll kill you and the others around you_. Except they have always found moments, where they would remember that they were people first. Klaus was always the touchiest, swinging an arm around the shoulder or flopping down onto their laps boneless. Ben was the best at comforting them, passing tissues to wipe away tears and pick out the perfect words to say or know when silence and a bit of company were enough. And maybe that’s why Five is so fond of them, loves them enough to die and live and die again. 

He needs to tell them if only so they can help him save themselves. 

“The world ends and you all die. I spent years in an apocalyptic hellscape that a sci-fi writer could only dream of. It’s soon too, I know that it happens soon.” 

“Years? Five you look like you never aged a day since you left,” Luther says. 

Luther who’s too tall and big to be _his_ Luther. 

“It’s complicated, okay. Time-travel is a crapshoot and I ended up projecting my consciousness backwards and voilà! The only version of me that exists without causing a paradox is me at thirteen.” 

Dolores berates him, _Five, you should be honest. They’re family_. 

And he’s too exhausted to explain to her the nuances of family, that sometimes they lie if it’s what’s best, and his siblings need to focus on saving the world and not the fact that he’s been dying and coming back to life for decades. His deaths aren’t permanent, so they shouldn’t matter in the long run.

“That makes no sense.” It's Diego speaking this time, like it’s a game of bad cop and idiot cop, because Allison is busy looking at him and someone else and Vanya is shying away, unobtrusive even as everyone is crowding in so the only choices left at the interrogation are Number One and Two. 

“It would if you were smarter.” 

_Be nice. You love them_. 

Except it’s harder to speak outside of his own head, without Dolores knowing every word he wants to say but can’t bear to. There are all these sharp edges that he can’t file down and maybe it’s because he’s thirteen again (has been thirteen for an endless amount of years) but he wants a moment to cry and grieve for the siblings he left behind a decade and a half ago. 

“Wait, wait, wait, does this mean Fivey is our _little_ brother.” Klaus chimes in, leaning over, practically laying on the table, to reach over and ruffle his hair. 

“ _No_ . It doesn’t mean I’m younger, I was still born the same day as all of you.” He swipes at the offending hand, tilting back, even if he wants to lean in – he’s safesafe _safe_ , his brother is still alive. 

“You’re thirteen, practically a baby, our precious baby brother.” 

The rest of them take his silence as an answer and Klaus continues to coo over the idea of having an _official_ younger sibling. 

“Dad always said time-travel could mess with the mind,” Luther eventually says, still ever loyal to their dad, and maybe Number One hasn’t changed even after all these years. 

Five jumps. 

  
  


+++

  
  


The blue light dies down after a second and Vanya is left staring at the chair Five previously occupied. God, _Five_ , back and alive after sixteen years and looking like the day he left. She’s still reeling from the fact and quietly unscrewing her pill bottle when her brothers start up again. 

“Nice going,” Diego snarks.

“Do you actually believe him?” Luther asks, disbelief written in his expression. 

And she gets it, really she does, because Five still looks thirteen. He was always bright and maybe not necessarily imaginative in the conventional means, she was the one who listened to all his brighter than life ideas. Maybe something did get mixed up during the leap. 

“I mean, he obviously went _somewhere_. He wasn’t wearing the itty-bitty uniform he ran off in and his fashion seems very apocalypse chic.” Klaus shrugs, reaching over for the now-abandoned sandwich and takes a bite before adding to the discussion.

Vanya grew up with her siblings being stars with their own line of comic books and cereal sponsorships, helping save the world, and coming home bloody with broken bones and bruises on every inch of their bodies. She’s the ordinary child in a family of superheroes, the idea of her brother disappearing and then coming home sixteen years later shouldn’t be that hard to grasp. 

Five being lost in time isn’t an impossible notion.

Just one that she hates. 

Even if she left the light on and sandwiches out, there was still a part of her that thought he ran off. He would come back, of course, Five had always promised that if they were to run away, they would do it together. And for all his flaws – a boy so brilliant that arrogance came easily, especially when he constantly lived waiting for people to catch up – he had never been much of a liar. 

Being selfish would have been forgivable, their family have hurt each other in worse ways after all. Instead, Five was alone in some barren wasteland while they were all convinced he was either dead or an asshole. 

Watching as the boys devolve into loud voices and chaos, Vanya is almost reminded of their childhood, except they’re now dysfunctional adults. It’s almost funny how things still haven’t changed, that she’ll always be the outsider looking in. 

Her name is suddenly called, said softly and with more care than the norm, and she glances up and Allison is looking at her, an almost smile playing on her lips. 

“You should check up on him,” she says, laying a hand on Vanya’s arm. “He shouldn't be alone right now, and well, you were always his favourite.” 

All the in-between years of no contact has made it hard for her to discern if her sister is being genuine or if this is just her trying to push Vanya out. ( _Have they ever really known each other?_ ) Family meetings are for _family_ after all and maybe this is a discussion she’s not invited to. 

Or maybe this is Allison who has a child, _who has lost her child_ , and Vanya needs to practice kindness like the rest of her family – there is no father to train them out of it now. 

  
  


+++

  
  


His bedroom feels like a stranger’s.

It’s also the most familiar thing Five’s been met with since returning home. 

Things are missing – the stuffed bear that would sit next to his pillow when it wasn’t with Vanya, his second favourite (Ben’s absolute favourite) missing from his bookshelf – and the lack of dust means that Mom still occasionally air out the room.

It feels like centuries, _it feels like yesterday_ , since he was here and if he closed his eyes, Five could almost convince himself that his siblings are still thirteen and waiting for him to come down for breakfast. 

He’s almost tempted to try again, to rewind time until he gets it right but something tells him he might have just gotten lucky or that if he tries again, he could get back but there’ll be nothing left of him. Missing memories seem like too small of a price to pay in exchange for going home. 

_What if I go back and I forget Dolores? What if I can’t save them?_

So Five stays. He changes into one of his old uniforms still hanging in his closet and lies on the too-soft bed before moving his way down to the floor. He’ll have to read through his notes again, see what he forgot and start from there but time-travelling has always taken too much from and he’s exhausted. 

There’s a knock at the door and he’s blinking awake. 

“Five?” The door creaks open and Vanya peeks her head in. “Can I come in? I brought you food.” 

All he can do is nod in assent. 

Vanya, who he never found, who only had a pile of stones and a marker as a grave. 

Vanya, who is here sitting in front of him and pushing a plate into his hands, who’s _alive_. 

Taking a bite of the sandwich, he tries to put off the feeling of wanting to cry for when he’s alone – it’s finally setting in that he’s actually home. 

“Fluffernutter?” Five asks, finally pinning down the familiar taste. 

“It used to be your favourite, I figured I couldn’t go wrong making it,” Vanya replies, with a small shrug. “When you first disappeared, I would make one every night because I was worried that you would come home and see the lights off or no one waiting for you and think we were gone.”

He looks down at the floor, chews to give him an excuse not to speak because what is he supposed to say to that? When he was convinced that they would think that he left them behind, that he had abandoned them, willingly letting dad ruin them with his narcissism and abuse, Vanya had still held out hope.

Dolores urges: _Be honest. We practiced that remember? One confession at a time and it’ll get easier once you start_. 

“I wanted to go home, I tried everything for years and I was just stuck. I didn’t find you, you know? Just your book and that’s how I knew about Ben and then I started making a list of all the things I could fix.” 

“You read my book?”

“Yeah, it wasn’t a bad read,” Five says with a small shrug of his shoulders. “I don’t think the others would be very happy about you airing our dirty laundry, but it could be worse.” 

“Not happy is putting it lightly.”

“Well, I did get put into a good light being your closest confidant at all.” 

The words bring a small smile to her lips and he shuffles closer just so their knees brush and he reminds himself that he’s home and alive, and even if this isn’t _her_ , it’s still Vanya and he can save her this time around. 

Dropping the crusts back onto the plate, Five clasps his hands together and leans forward. “So, I need your help with the apocalypse.” 

He can tell she doesn’t believe him. Vanya’s tells are still the same from when they were kids, the way her brows furrowed together as she tries to figure out how to word something nicely. 

“Dad-”

“Dad thought the perfect way to dissuade me from time-travelling was to make a convoluted metaphor comparing it to changing my state of matter and being into an acorn. I doubt he’s the leading expert in time travel.” 

“ _Was_ Five, he’s dead. It’s why we’re all together for the first time in years. You appeared just in time for his funeral.” 

“Wait, shit, Dad’s dead?” 

Objectively, Five knew the old man wouldn’t live forever but he figured he would have to factor in his meddling or general want for control while simultaneously trying to save the world and his siblings. 

This made his life infinitely easier. 

Unpacking the relief he felt with the news of his father’s death could come later, when he could schedule a time to launch himself into a panic. 

(Five was always ready to drag his siblings out of this horrid place when he made it back home – had made plans to convince at least most of them and would have kidnapped the others if he had to. There was money hidden away and plans written in an old journal of the logistics of seven kids living on their own.

They’re adults now and their dad is dead. 

They’re _safe_.)

“Okay, Dad’s dead. We can bury him or-”

“He wanted to be cremated,” Vanya cuts in.

“So we can spread his ashes later, but let’s circle back to the more important topic at hand: the end of the world. I need you to believe me, okay? Even if you really don’t,” he pleads, plans running through his head. He needs to find out the day it happens again, if Five’s lucky he’ll have months maybe years. They look too similar to how he had found him though and he worries that time they don’t have is ticking away. 

“Why me? I don’t even have powers. I can’t help you fight or take down criminals.” 

“Who _cares_ about that, I need you! You actually think, unlike the rest of our family. Also, just look at me!” 

Five spreads his arm, gesturing around himself. “I’m thirteen, I can’t even drive. Are you going to let your _thirteen-year-old_ brother out by himself?”

Vanya laughs and he would be insulted if she wasn’t his favourite.

“You know that would be more convincing if Dad didn’t raise all of us for violence and murder since we were babies.” 

“If you don’t say you’re in, I swear to god I’ll steal a car and crash it just to say I told you so.” 

“Okay, okay I’m in.” 

“Great, you can help me convince the rest of the idiots. Do you think I can buy their attention with doughnuts like when we were kids?”

The look she sends him tells him not to keep his hopes up but this is a start. 

One down. Five to go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, thank you so much for reading! Hopefully the next part will be coming out soon :3c I've written a lot of different sections that I'm super excited to post!
> 
> I've also made a tumblr here: [link](https://a-stra.tumblr.com/) and I'll be posting updates (maybe previews???) as well as shouting my au/fic ideas into the void rather than have my friend suffer through every though that goes thru my head (ex. me writing an entire essay about an inception au for tua when she has never seen inception in her life.)

**Author's Note:**

> SO!!! I'm Trying (TM) to give this a semblance of a plot, but I'm also like Oh But Family Fluff. Look it's 13-Y/O Five who has about 58 years of memories kind of??? but also he's 13! I also just have a lot of AUs going on in my brain & my main thought for this one is to Family Fluff & Mr. Pennycrumb tbh. But I'm def trying to figure out how to get the apoc & how the Commission figure into this :^)


End file.
